IEM Dallas 2024 was a very entertaining CS2 event that featured 16 of the world’s best teams. With few exceptions, every competitor who would have attended a Major was present in Dallas and that created an opportunity to watch some world-class Counter-Strike.
Among the big names, such as MOUZ, FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere, Team Vitality, G2 Esports, Team Spirit, and Team Liquid, 9z was almost invisible.
People looked at this team the way you look at an episodic character of a TV series – you know that it won’t take long before something bad happens to them and they vanish forever from the story.
But in the IEM series, 9z’s fate was very different. The team entered the tournament ranked 40 in the world and by the end of it, they were ranked 13. That’s above Team Falcons, BIG, The MongolZ, FURIA Esports, ENCE, and other famous organizations.
9z’s Results At IEM Dallas
9z started IEM Dallas in group A, where their first opponent was the number-one team in the world, MOUZ, who had won the previous two CS2 LAN events, ESL Pro League S19 and BetBoom Dacha Belgrade.
Against such a competitor, 9z shouldn’t have won more than 6 – 8 rounds. But they actually won the whole match quite easily. After the first half of the map, the score was 3 – 9 in their favor.
In the second match, 9z encountered Team Liquid, who had defeated Complexity in the first round. This match was extremely tough for both teams.
Liquid should have won very quickly, but they somehow lost the first map 16 – 13 after winning the first half of it 3 – 9. The 2nd and 3rd maps had tight scores as well: 9 – 13 and 13 – 11.
After beating two giants, it was Team Vitality’s turn to try and stop 9z. But they too were bested in the end: 13 – 9 on Dust 2 and 16 – 14 on Anubis.
In the playoffs, 9z played a single match, against G2 Esports. G2 would go on to win the tournament, but at the time it looked like 9z had better chances of winning this match, simply because of their group stage performance.
The scores were close: 11 – 13 on Inferno and 8 – 13 on Dust 2. Nikola “NiKo” Kovac had a particularly good performance in this match, finishing with a score of 40 – 25.
